Graphics card temperature

[Nashsafc]

i want to know, by putting the cpu cooler so that it is pulling air from the back of the graphics card and blowing it towards the top of the psu. Do the backs of graphics cards get hot, thus making the air around them hot? Please don't ask me why i want to turn my cpu facing this direction. The reason why is because there would be more of a gap between the cpu cooler's fan than there would be if i had turned it facing the hard drive ( the dvd drive side etc).

 

[skolpo]

I'm assuming when you say the "back" of the Graphics card, you mean the top of it, where the GPU fan is visible. Most of the heat generated from the graphics card is blown to the back of your computer, as in the area that you plug your DVI/HDMI/VGA adapter to. There is still generated ambient heat and it's hotter than the heat generated from your HDDs.

 

[Nashsafc]

no sorry i mean where the graphics card hasn't been covered by the heatsink. Where all the soldering work has been left visible. Obviously some heat should be emitted from here, but not enough to seriously effect my cpu cooler? There is also an air vent just above this area, to allow air to come and and cool the back of the graphics card pcb, and to allow air for the cpu fan to take in. There is a conciderable larger gap between the gpu and the cpu cooler compared to the cpu cooler facing the hard drives. My case is matx. But looking inside there is actually plenty of space for my zalman 9500nt cooler. It's just my motherboard is untypical to most and pushes it towards the side rather than keeping the cpu socket in the middle. This is because it has a massive heatink nearer to the backplate which pushes the socket further away.

 

[coozie7]

There is some heat rejected from the back of a card, but the small surface area restricts this, but this assumes the card has a cooler that exhausts out of the case.
If the card has a cooler that dumps its heat into the case though your idea might be a bad one: The CPU fan would now be drawing hot air from the GPU cooler below rather than from the cooler HDD side of the case.

 

[Nashsafc]

my graphics card is an xfx gts 250. It has one of those cover heatsink coolers, you know the one that takes up two pci slots and has an alluminium cover covering the whole of the gpu. There is also a front case fan. Which is concidreably close to the gpu, because the case can only fit 2 hdds, 2 floppy drives and 2 dvd drives, so the rest of the space at the bottom of the case has been given for the GPU, so i can even fit a 5870 if i wanted which will eventually go in when i decide to buy it. There is also a gap between the gpu and the top of the hard drive bay so air from the front case fan can go towards the cpu. Since i have turned the cpu cooler around, i put my hand next to it and i suppose i can feel relatively cool air being drawn in. i don't know though, when my graphics card gets hot when it is playing a game, might the back actually heat up the air enough to effect the cpu cooler. I don't think my hard drives get hotter than 30 degrees. But i thought it would be better to leave a larger gap so that air can accumulate and the cpu cooler has plenty to pull in.

 

[coozie7]

For a little more peace of mind, install some monitoring software: I like Speedfan for the CPU and GPU-Z for the card, but it sounds like everything is fine.

 

[Nashsafc]

i have speedfan, hardware monitor. OCCT, NVIDIA System monitor. GPU-Z, CPU-Z. Pretty much all the free monitoring stuff possible. I'm having some temp problems though, but they are really random, i think it has something to do with my nb voltage rather than cpu voltage. I overclock my phenom ii 720 to 3.2ghz, sometime i get 46 idle, sometimes i get 38 idle, and rarely i get 32 idle. I'm just really quite annoyed how the temperature is not stable, or reliable. The cpu overclock is fine, my motherboard can reach some nice stable overclocks, it just that temperature is acting funny. I'm getting 64 sometimes when i overclock it to 3.5 that was just a one off. But i keep it on 3.2, at max now i think i usually get 52 to 54 (for 5 seconds). That doesn't sound right or does it? XFX 8300 Geforce motherboard. Right now i have 38 idle, i see that putting nb voltage down and off auto i get lower temps.

 

[Nashsafc]

you want to see some pics?
This is views of the case. Sorry lol it's a tiny cheap camera.

http://s335.photobucket.com/albums/m463/Nashsafc/?action=view&current=Photo001.jpg

http://s335.photobucket.com/albums/m463/Nashsafc/?action=view&current=Photo006.jpg

http://s335.photobucket.com/albums/m463/Nashsafc/?action=view&current=Photo003.jpg

http://s335.photobucket.com/albums/m463/Nashsafc/?action=view&current=Photo004.jpg

This is the bottom of the case, do you rekon this is an advantage? Having an air vent at the bottom, the gap between the case and the front panel is so air can get in; that is where the front case fan is. The 4 black feet hold the case above the floor.

http://s335.photobucket.com/albums/m463/Nashsafc/?action=view&current=Photo008.jpg


This is the side pane, the other side is identical, just with the far right vent only.

http://s335.photobucket.com/albums/m463/Nashsafc/?action=view&current=Photo010.jpg

Also despite my graphics card looks as though it will get hot, it usually idles 45 degrees, it used to idle 40 degrees at times. i don't know what happened now. Is that a good start, that is when the lids ar on as well.

 

[skolpo]

Oh man, I totally spaced out and thought the GPUs face the other way, haha. But if you're saying the card idles around 45, that's still within a safe range. I'd personally have the cooler face east and west, but you're still pulling fairly safe temperatures. And for the unstable temperatures, that's quite typical, but you always want to find a stable medium where the temperatures do not exceed 70 celsius at load.

 

[Nashsafc]

yeah, for me i got told that i don't want to have it exceeding 58 load. For 3.2ghz overclock it doesn't exceed 53 degrees. At one time it went over 54. No i shouldn't aim for 70 at all, it will smoke if that happenes. As the maximum limit is 73 degrees celcius according to the AMD website. Also now it's idling around 37 degrees. I think with a 3.5ghz overclock i got 64 degrees (max), and i just made the conclusion that i wasn't to do it again lol.
By the way does anyone know where i can get a Cooler Master Elite 342 case from? It's micro atx but it seems better than my case in that it is longer. I come from the UK, so please don't send me links from newegg, and sellers that only ship to the US thanks. But i am prepared to by from the US if they ship to the UK.